Washington Green Schools

Report Card

School Grounds and Gardens

Your Report Card is your opportunity to share out all the effort your school put into your certification project. This allows our certification review team to get a full picture of your efforts.In order to give you full credit for all of your hard work, please respond to each question with as much detail as possible!

STEP ONE: BUILD YOUR GREEN TEAM 10 points

  1. Please describe your Green Team. Please include the number of members, their roles in the school community, and any other details.
  2. How often does your Green Team meet?
  3. What is your goal for making your school greener and healthier this year? Goals should be SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Specific).
  4. Give us a brief description of your school. Include whether it’s in a rural or urban community as well as any other details that makes your school stand out.
  5. If you have already certified as a Washington Green School, please share how you are maintaining your Lasting Change from previous environmental categories.

STEP TWO: ASSESS 25 points

General

  1. Does your school curriculum incorporate the use of the school grounds (i.e. garden education, plant growth, water education, wildlife, habitat, field science, physical fitness etc.)?

Water

  1. Does your school employ water conservation practices such as drip irrigation, watering timers, or other methods to maintain lawns, playfields, landscape plantings, and/or gardens?

Existing Gardens

  1. Does your school have a food garden (vegetable, fruit, orchard, native plant)and/or specialty garden (rain, butterfly, wildflower, herb, shrub-steppe, pollinator, etc.) that students work in on a regular basis (classes, after-school programs, other)?
  1. If you have a food garden, what is done with the produce that is harvested (i.e., used in cafeteria, eaten in the garden or classroom, taken home by students/teachers, given to a food bank).

Wildlife Habitat

  1. Does your school have any of the following on its campus to help attract wildlife? Please choose all that apply.

Bird Feeders ____Bird or Bat houses ____

Hummingbird, Butterfly garden ____Water Features (bird bath) ____

School Grounds Management

  1. Does your school district have policies in place to minimize or ban the use of chemicals on the school grounds? An Integrated Pest Management policy is one example.

Audit

  1. Please complete the School Grounds Audit in the Classroom Supplement and transfer your findings to the following questions. During this assessment phase, you will calculate data regarding your schoolgrounds currently as a baseline for your Lasting Change.
  2. Total of Yes responses: ______(Your Score!)
  1. Total of Needs Improvement responses: ______
  1. Total of No responses: ______
  1. What do your assessment findings suggest about what would be an effective Lasting Change?

STEP THREE: MAKE A LASTING CHANGE 20 points

  1. Describe in detail what action(s) you took to improvethe grounds at your school. This is your opportunity to share how your action(s): engaged the school community in your efforts, will carry on year after year, and lead to policy, behavioral, or systems changes.
  1. What challenge(s) did you face while implementing your Lasting Change and what kind of solutions were you able to develop to address the challenge(s)?

STEP FOUR: VERIFY YOUR IMPACT 25 points

The purpose of the verification step is to determine to what extent your Lasting Change is having an impact on your school’s grounds.At least one month after implementing your Lasting Change, please answer the verification questions.

  1. Did your Green Team reach the goal set in Step 1?
  1. Please elaborate on key factors in achieving this goal or reasons that you did not achieve the goal.
  1. After implementing your Lasting Change, what results did you find during your audit?
  1. Total of Yes responses: ______(Your Score!)
  1. Total of Needs Improvement responses: ______
  1. Total of No responses: ______
  1. What circumstances may have influenced your Lasting Change results?
  1. What changes could your school make in the future to maintain your Lasting Change?
  1. What are some takeaways or lessons learned from this process that you did not include in your answers to the questions above?

STEP FIVE: SHARE YOUR STORY 20 points

  1. In order for your sustainability efforts to become a part of your school's identity, the entire community has to be aware and involved. How did you engage the school community in the certification process?
  2. What do you consider to be the greatest success that you’ve seen as a result of your action project?
  3. What was the greatest challenge that you faced when completing the certification process?
  4. Your community should know about the exceptional work you’ve done to become a Washington Green School! For example, we may help you get the word out by sharing a press release of your certification story with a local news outlet. We’ll need a few things to make that happen:

The name of your local paper where we can send the press release:

A brief synthesis of how your Green Team has made a positive impact on your school:
A quote from a member of the school community or Green Team about why this certification project was important:

 Please email at least one photo of your Green Team or Green Team project to . If your photo includes students, email their photo release forms, too.

 Please check here if you’d like to be contacted to share your certification story in more detail with our statewide community.

STEP SIX: CERTIFY AND CELEBRATE Total: 100 points

  1. Please give your Report Card a careful final review to make sure that all of your information is complete and correct. We will follow up with you in about two weeks with a review of your Report Card and information about celebrating your success!